Review Detail

To the fanedit community,

I am the wife of the great Stromboli Bones himself! Prepare yourself for a long one and please read this knowing that (while biased) my review will be quite honest!

Stromboli and I got together after these movies came out. I am a very avid fan of the Lord of the Rings universe and I have always enjoyed the Hobbit movies (I went and saw them all on opening night of the original theater releases). I want you all to know I never minded any of these movies and having more time with the characters I so loved is a treasure to me. That being said I only watched The Battle of the Five Armies the once in theater. When I say I never thought that cutting these movies down I mean I NEVER thought that fanedits were a thing nor would I ever take an interest in finding a better version.
This Journey for me started when Stromboli decided the originals were not "good enough". There was AMAZING potential but the studio really stunted the greatness that could have been the Hobbit franchise. So he found this website. Where he combed through what felt like a BILLION fanedits of this film to find the version that felt perfect. I cannot even to begin to put into words how EXHAUSTING it is to see the same movie and the same scenes reworked over and over again in another person's vision of how it "should" go. I heard "Babe look at how DonKamillo put it into episodes" and "YOOOOOOOO check out how Maple Films made this song flow into this other song" IN A FREAKING SECOND TRANSITON THAT NO ONE IN THE WORLD WOULD NOTICE. We combed though every edit that this stupid website had to offer way past the point where I was tired of seeing these movies. Until, to the dismay of us both....he decided to make his own...

This man of mine obsessed over these edits, taking his favorite bits from his hardworking precesessors. Stromboli took bits and bobs and even full scenes yes from other people but he had to recreate, mesh and come up with his own ideas as the time went on. The barrel scene was probably the MOST painstaking. I cannot tell you HOW MANY TIMES I would be in the middle of putting away laundry or watching my own show when I would hear "Honey will you watch this it will only take a sec!!!" (when it rarely ever took one sec).
When I say he obsessed I mean it he OBSESSED over getting every minute detail right. On game nights, I kept hearing from his coworkers "if I have to listen to him tell me about this part of his edit or that part of his edit anymore I'm gonna be sick. I don't know how you do it".

I had a LOT of fun at first hearing how he was gonna take out Radagast and get rid of showing Bilbo leaving the dwarfs to give Gandalf the Arkenstone. But when it got to the eagle scene taking the troop from the flaming trees to the mountain where they first see Erebor...I almost lost it.
We had to put in a rule, he wasn't allowed to talk about the Hobbit in the car or in the shower, especially the shower (yes we are gross and in love that we shower together daily). Yet in one of these breaks of my rule was the time when I got to do my part and suggest a way to make that eagle scene work!! HUZZAH! When all was said and done, (because in the middle of this he proposed and asked me to marry him after 4 years together on Hobbit day 2020) my wedding gift to him was renting out a theater where all his friends and family could see the masterpiece I knew he had created. Here we asked ALL of his friends to come and watch and to do so with a critical eye. He wanted any and all feed back; he wanted to know if anything felt wrong or jarring.... and that is where my dear readers......someone told him "I loved ALMOST all of it".
The ONE scene that I helped piece together...the one that made me feel like I was part of the team.... was the one small piece that didn't quite fit :( Out of nowhere he found a new edit with the perfect to pieces to Stromboli's problems. This guy M4 had digitally removed the scars from Thorins face after the eagle rescue, AND fixed the Smaug exit from the building where he was all gold (another major pain point that I just couldn't watch ONE MORE editors rendition cause they all felt the SAME!!!!) Thank god for those small but lifesaving changes that someone took the time to do. You have No IDEA how nice it was to stop hearing about those parts of the movie.

With this long winded story coming to a close, the man of my dreams has added what I'm sure may be just another drop in the bucket of hobbit edits. And while I don't wanna watch the Hobbit originals or any of the edits for a very Very long time, this edit was combed over to be the most digestible, most entertaining, and to show the upmost respect for all the creators and people who worked on the originals and edits. This IS the best edit for me. It has everything I want. The episodic format is easily shared with friends who don't have enough time in their day for extended editions (that I normally prefer). The pacing is done well and maintains the integrity of the story, improves it actually! The music is fun and whimsical as a movie about Dwarfs on an epic quest to kill a dragon should be and the transitions in the audio were done in such a way that I could never find them if I tried (and believe me, I have heard every single one so, SO many times). I am so incredibly proud of this man you have no idea. This is a very enjoyable experience and in my very biased opinion: a 9/10 (minus a point for my pain and suffering, because oh boy I do not wanna watch these again ANYTIME soon).
--Mrs. Stromboli Bones